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By Sara Zaske, WSU News

SPOKANE, Wash. American Indian and Native Alaskan populations have been hit hard by the pandemicexactly how hard, no one can say for sure, since there is a lack of information and testing in these communities.

A new project led by Dr. Dedra Buchwald, a physician and professor with WSUs Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, has received a $4.4 million National Institutes of Health grant to help address that knowledge gap and bring resources to curb the COVID-19 crisis within these populations.

Many things come together to make American Indians and Native Alaskans particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, and at the same time, make them hesitant to participate in efforts to get tested and get vaccinated, said Buchwald, who is also the director of the Institute for Research and Education to Advance Community Health or IREACH.

This grant is one of four recently received by College of Medicine researchers to help deal with aspects of COVID-19 crisis. The others include:

The National Institutes of Health grant is intended to help address health disparities among underserved and especially vulnerable Native populations in urban settings. An estimated 71% of American Indians and Native Alaskans live in urban areas. Buchwald said these populations have many risk factors, including a high prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, multi-generational households and poor living conditions. Many also struggle with poverty and limited access to quality health care and education.

This is complicated by a distrust in the federal government and health care systems, given the long history of atrocities committed against Native peoples, such as the deliberate dispersal of blankets laden with smallpox and sterilization of Native women without true consent.

In the new project, called COVID-19 Epidemiology, Research, Testing and Services or CONCERTS, researchers from WSU, University of Colorado and University of Minnesota will partner with Urban Indian Health Programs in six major cities with large Native populations: Albuquerque, N.M.; Anchorage, Ala.; Denver, Minneapolis, Seattle and Wichita, Kan.

The partners will work to understand who has been tested already and what challenges exist to getting people tested and ultimately vaccinated. The grant will also fund new resources for each site to help promote testing depending on their locally determined needs. Some sites might need PPE or testing kits while others may want to establish a testing drive-through site or send out case workers or COVID navigators to make contact with individuals.

Most of the people working on this project at the health programs will be from the tribal communities they serve, Buchwald said.

American Indian and Native Alaskan people are more knowledgeable about what is going on in their communities than outside researchers, and we want to make sure that we have good trusting relationships, she said. Our partners are really key to encouraging more people to get tested, and in the future, vaccinated, if determined to be desirable.

Read more:
Project aims to increase COVID19 testing for Native populations - WSU News

This entry was posted on October 13, 2020 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Preventative Medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |